Sep 11, 2007 Sep 13, 2007 Wednesday September 12, 2007
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The LaCie Golden Disk seems to have had ''an unfortunate smelting accident''
LaCie has announced the Golden Disk, a device created by famed industrial designer Ora-Ito. Offering up to 500GB of storage this sleek device will become the focal point for any design conscience... ....Read more on MacMerc.com
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iTunes Store downloads unresponsive for almost 48Â hours
For many users (myself included), downloading purchased songs from the iTunes store has been next to impossible. This seems to be a widespread issue as well. Covering multiple countries such as the U.S., Germany, Canada, Sweden, and others, there are people who haven't been able to download purchased songs for as long as 48 hours in some cases. What seems to be happening is users place songs/albums in their cart and when they click to buy the items the store throws an error and clears the user's cart of any songs. It turns out the songs have been purchased but just won't download. Apple's typical response has been to do Store > Check for Purchases… to download the missing songs, but seems no one has had any luck with that. The error that we troubled users have grown to love is simply: Have you experienced these issues? Have you been able to get a non-canned response from Apple on the issue? error, itunes
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Hazel 2.0.2 doesn't just organize your files by the color of their label but by the character of their content
Do you use Hazel? If you don't, there is probably some part of your Mac that could use its powers of automation and organization. If you do use Hazel, then you need to go download the update to... ....Read more on MacMerc.com
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The BTCUP for iPod lets you listen to music or talk on the phone
Macally today announced the release of its BTCUP, a full-channel FM transmitter in a cup holder design that lets you enjoy your iPod in the car while also integrating Bluetooth hands-free... ....Read more on MacMerc.com
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20-inch iMacs shipping with janky LCDs?
Filed under: Desktops Apple took some flak a few months ago for shipping 18-bit LCD panels in the MacBook and MacBook Pro -- a hue and cry that reached its inevitable conclusion with a class-action lawsuit over the "sparkly" and "grainy" quality of the screens. Well, it looks like Cupertino isn't too fazed by the uproar, because it appears that the new 20-inch iMac is shipping with a similar 18-bit panel -- and, not surprisingly, prompting the same type of complaints. We're not sure how widespread the issues are, but we're starting our lawsuit clock...now.[Via TUAW] Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsOffice Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
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SendStation Dock Extender for iPod goes over to the dark side
SendStation announced today that their Dock Extender for iPod is now also available in black. The Dock Extender is unique in the iPod accessory market and allows you to dock the iPod or attach... ....Read more on MacMerc.com
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Why Dan Frommer and Scott Moritz Are Wrong on iPhone Sales
Daniel Eran DilgerSilicon Alley Insider's Dan Frommer says Apple's announcement of reaching its million mark goal in iPhone sales three weeks early is actually bad news for Apple and is convolutedly "below plan." He also says the announcement only props up the speculative conjecture by Scott Moritz of the Street that Apple's iPhones sales are somehow woefully below expectations. They're wrong, here's why.The PremiseFrommer wrote that Apple isn't selling iPhones as fast as planned and is set to only sell around half of its 2008 goal.His premise revolves around the idea that if Apple were selling iPhones at "a constant rate," a million phones in 74 days would be five million per year. However, because it sold over a quarter of those in the opening day and a half at the end of June, Frommer calculates that sales of the remainder in the 72 days since the first of July mean that Apple is only hitting a "3.6 million annual run rate."By the end of 2008, that would only result in 5.8 million units instead of the ten million goal Apple. [Silicon Alley Insider: Apple's iPhone: 1 Million Is Below Plan]Strike One: The Run Rate Myth.The most obvious problem with that idea is the fact that devices don't sell at a constant “run rate." Apple's iPhone sales took off at launch much faster than the original iPod due to the fact that a swell of early adopters were ready to buy it after being convinced over six months of anticipation. At the same time, many potential buyers held off on plans to buy the iPhone until they could read reviews and get a real sense of how it worked. Many were also locked into contracts with Verizon or Sprint. With only six months of advanced notice, it will still be a few more months before the majority of buyers who want an iPhone even get the chance to buy one without having to pay outrageous fees to cancel their existing mobile contract. iPhone sales are also now taking on the network effect of the iPod, as early adopters show their friends. All these factors have difficult to estimate impacts upon sales that make trying to figure a static “run rate� a very simplistic and pointless exercise.However, there is another factor that simply blows the entire idea of a static “run rate� out of the water. Last November, I predicted that sales of the Zune would bomb that winter because Microsoft had failed to critically examine Apple's historical sales patterns. Sure enough, the Zune was thrown against the rocks by Apple's riptide. Frommer's idea ignores that same reality by imagining that iPhone sales will schlep along at a linear pace. Had Frommer tried to calculate an "annual run rate" for the iPod based on a portion of third quarter sales at any point over the last half decade, he would never have been close to accurate. That’s because Apple’s iPod sales roughly triple every winter quarter.In 2002, it sold nearly as many iPods in its winter quarter as it did the first three quarters combined: 219,000In 2003, it actually sold more iPods in its winter quarter than in the first three combined: 733,000In 2004, it again sold more iPods in its winter quarter than in the first three: 4,580,000In 2005, it sold more than 4 million units every quarter, but still sold nearly three times as many in the winter: 14,480,000.In 2006, it sold more than 8 million units every quarter, and then sold over 21 million in the winter quarter.In 2007, it has maintained quarterly sales between 10.5 and 9.8 million per quarter.[Strike 3: Why Zune will Bomb this Winter]Strike Two: The Have it Both Ways Myth.One particularly annoying bit of analysts' talk about Apple's expectations is that they can't seem to decide if Apple's projections are bad because they are conservative lowballs, or if they are bad for being overly enthusiastic figures the company won't be able to reach. They often try to describe them as both, loading contempt on both sides of the scale. This makes them look very foolish. Do they think we have no memory, or are they just changing their stories back and forth in sheer desperation?Frommer tried to argue both sides at once in the same article. Recall that Apple only ever gave two iPhone sales goals: one million by the end of the first quarter of sales, and ten million by the end of 2008. In his piece, Frommer suggests Apple will only be able to sell 5.8 million iPhones by the end of 2008, based on that fallacious "run rate." That would be just over half of Apple's ten million goal. However, he then says that Apple's immediate short term goal was an unimpressive low ball, no doubt because Apple reached it three weeks early.Apple's stated goals must be a greatly frustrating logical conundrum for Frommer, because even at a “run rate" of one million in a quarter, Apple could only ever hope to sell six million iPhones by the end of 2008, another five quarters later. No wonder he's faced with trying to say that the immediate goal was too low and the longer term one is too high! Frommer needs to stop trying to pound round facts into square holes just so they can be stacked up like bricks the way he would like them to be.Strike Three: The Market Bearing Price Myth.While Frommer and Moritz are enamored with the idea that iPhone prices could only be cut if sales were in crisis, a variety of obvious market realities don't support that simpleton idea. Between now and the end of 2008, Apple has just two holiday seasons. If it wants to dramatically exploit its historical potential for selling roughly three times as many gadgets during the winter season, it makes sense to trade off unit pricing for volume sales, even if it could perhaps sell fewer at a higher price and make more short term profits doing so.Such a strategy isn't unique. Microsoft and Sony currently lose money on their new game consoles in desperate bids to establish their gaming and HD video playing platforms. Even so, this year they both cut prices again to accelerate volume demand. Nintendo purposely aimed low to capture volume sales using a more attractive price point. Given high demand for the Wii and extremely constrained availability, Nintendo "should" seemingly raise its console price and profiteer. It hasn't. While prices are clearly linked to demand, it is a common fallacy to think that the "right price" is always the highest the market will bear. Jobs' 99 cent pricing in the iTunes store is clearly not the top price consumers will pay for downloads. Music labels are fuming that other licensees such as Verizon will collect $2.50 or more for portions of a song sold as a ringtone. Jobs wants media prices low to induce volume sales and attract buyers to the legitimate market for music and movie downloads. Labels and studios want "market pricing," in part so they can jack up the price of popular music to exploit consumers, and in part so they can exploit artists by threatening to release their work at lower tiered prices and signal to the market that their careers are over.[Universal vs Apple in the iTunes Store Contracts][Nintendo Wii vs Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PS3]This All Happened Before.Dial back the clock twenty years, and you'll discover that Steve Jobs also fought with Apple CEO John Sculley over the price of the original Macintosh. The desire to use an expensive but pioneering amount of RAM and a futuristic new processor had inflated the price of the Mac, but the design team was still able to deliver it at a fairly attractive price point of $1,995. Scully determined that the Mac would still sell at $2495, delivering high profits to fund splashy advertising. Nothing on the market was really similar to the Mac apart from Apple's $9,995 Lisa. VisiOn for the PC similarly cost nearly $10,000 and did far less. Sculley thought that the market would bear anything Apple might charge. Andy Hertzfeld recalled on Folklore.org that in October 1983, "Steve Jobs strode into the software area one evening, looking angry. 'You're not going to like this,' he told us, 'but Sculley is insisting that we charge $2495 for the Mac instead of $1995, and use the extra money for a bigger marketing budget. He figures that the early adopters will buy it no matter what the price. He also wants more of a cushion to protect Apple II sales. But don't worry, I'm not going to let him get away with it!'"Jobs fought Sculley over the price increase, but Sculley prevailed. Sure enough, Macs did sell well out of the gate to early adopters at the higher price, but sales then began to stall. While Jobs couldn't cut the price for the original Mac to induce wider adoption in the mid 80s, he could choose to cut the price of the iPhone early and use interest in the iPod Touch to ramp users toward the iPhone. That price cut will dramatically boost sales this winter, just as iPod price cuts and feature refreshes do every year.Apple will earn less profit on individual hardware sales of the iPhone, and may even earn slightly less money overall this quarter than it might have selling the iPhone at $599. However, a $399 iPhone will dramatically boost the company's sustainable subscriber revenues and devastatingly cut into stationary rivals like Palm and the Windows Mobile licensees, giving them little opportunity retool and strike back with copycat products.  [Price Fight - Folklore.org][Office Wars 3 - How Microsoft Got Its Office Monopoly]Strike Four: The Myth of Unlimited Availability.Another problem with idea that iPhone sales were in crisis--and that a price cut is a conspiracy to hide the truth--is that Apple sold out of iPhones in many of its retail stores throughout the first three weeks on sale.Carl Howe of Blackfriar's Communications tracked iPhone availability every day through July, and then animated the results in a movie that depicts just how constrained iPhone inventories in Apple's retail stores were. So not only did Apple meet its 94 day goal 20 days early, but it did so despite having no or few iPhones to sell in many of its stores during the first 21 days. Price isn't just related to demand, but also to supply.That also demonstrates the fallacy of Scott Moritz' assertion that Apple secretly planned to sell a million iPhones in a day and a half, and was sorely disappointed after failing to do so. How could Apple have planned on selling a million units in one day when it didn't even have a million units on the shelves of its stores during the first month? Remember, Moritz wasn't saying Apple had a delivery problem in getting enough units to stores as Nintendo is experiencing with its constrained supplies of the Wii. Instead, he tried to suggest that interest in the iPhone was far below Apple's estimates, and buyers were leaving it on the shelf like Windows Vista. The result, he claimed, was that "rivals were rejoicing."The only real rejoicing by rivals was that Moritz was volunteering to repeat the talking points handed to him by Verizon shill Roger Entner of IAG Research. Just hours before Apple announced it had sold a million units, Moritz tried to get some traction out of the idea that Apple had dropped the price in desperation to find another half million or so customers over the next three weeks. Apple isn't the typical tech company being run by visionless bean counters. It it were, it would have continued selling $600 iPhones at least through the end of September and then announced that it had sold its million. Apple had to push out new iPods in early September and fit the iPhone into the price range because next month it will be rolling out Leopard and a series of new software updates. Apple feeds the press in small, consistent, and regular feedings so reporters know what to write. If Apple were a big stupid company such as, say HP, it would parade out a mix of dozens of consumer and business products all together in one big event, and nobody would ever hear about any of it. HP did.[Why a million iPhones in 74 days is better than you think- Blackfriars][HP's marketing this week: fashionable but ineffective - Blackfriars][Unraveling Anti-Apple Panic: the iPhone Launch Success] [More on Scott Moritz and the Jim Cramer Misinformation Engine]Strike Five: It's Too Late to Deny the iPhone.The most comical part of Frommers’ analysis is that he’s trying to stuff a cat back into a bag and explain that there was never really any cat, long after everyone in the room heard the purr and pet the thing. Sorry, but the windows of opportunity to doubt the iPhone have long since closed.Real Windows Enthusiasts were aware of the need to deny the iPhone well before its release. They all chimed in with reasons why the iPhone wouldn't work, wouldn't offer what consumers want, and wouldn't sell well, all hoping that their non-stop misinformation campaigns would act as a self-fulfilling prophesy. They failed miserably.John Dvorak began his smear campaign immediately, appearing on CNBC to say that the iPhone was "trending against what people are really liking in phones nowadays, which are those little keypads.� He explained, “The BlackJack, the Samsung, the BlackBerry obviously pushes this kind of thing. The Palm, all of these. I guess some of these stocks went down on the Apple announcement, thinking that Apple could do no wrong. But I think Apple can do wrong, and I think this is it." Reader Jim Barrow sent in a link to a MarketWatch article from March, where Dvorak scribed a rambling diatribe entitled "Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone." He offered no factual basis for worrying that the iPhone might not work out apart from the offhanded comment that "there is no likelihood that Apple can be successful in a business this competitive," words which echoed Dvorak's 1984 observation that "the Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a 'mouse.' There is no evidence that people want to use these things."In April, Dvorak inflamed his 'pull the plug' rhetoric further in a TWiT podcast, where he reported to an audience of hundreds of thousands that the iPhone only delivered "40 minutes of talk time" and "the interface fouls up constantly.� Dvorak said that his inside information on the iPhone came from a "guy at Cingular who’s testing the product," adding, "he’s telling me confidentially and I shouldn’t be telling anybody."[John Dvorak: How Wrong Can One Guy Be?][Readers Write: Don't Write About John Dvorak Anymore]It'll Be the Death of You.Dvorak was joined by Rob Enderle, who called the iPhone “damned� and “not a very good phone� at every opportunity in the months before its launch, despite not really knowing anything about it, or even ever offering any rational criticism. Instead, Enderle appealed to fantasy fears of sexual assault, murder, and the violent death of children, all of which he suggested might somehow be related to the iPhone. Unaware that a password protected iPhone--or even a unauthorized unit without a configured service plan--can still be used to make emergency phone calls, Enderle wrote about, "an emergency situation where, say, a woman was being raped and couldn’t call for help because she didn’t remember her iPhone password." As I understand, with a Windows Mobile phone, even if the unit crashed while trying to place the call, at least the victim could use it like a brick as a blunt weapon. Enderle also feared that being unable to take out the battery would somehow making recharging it impossible, resulting an a scenario where one might end up on “the wrong side of town� with a dead iPhone and be murdered because of it. Being on the wrong side of town was apparently the source of most murders prior to the arrival of the cell phone, which somehow made it safe to be in bad neighborhoods. For those who unfazed by the prospect of one's own own grizzly death in relation to the iPhone, Enderle appealed to his readers to please think of the children, particularly the potential for their brutal decapitation in an iPhone-related collision. "If you are buying this phone for a child or another member of your family," Enderle warned, "please emphasize that entering data on this phone while driving is dangerous." In contrast, operating the slide out keyboards of an HTC brick phone, or using both hands to thumb type on a BlackBerry may or may not save your children as they drive off an embankment, but at least you'll know they didn't die at the hands of Apple's "damned" iPhone.[SCO, Linux, and Microsoft in the History of OS: 1970s][Mac OS X vs Linux: Third Party Software and Security]Pure Concentrated Evil with a Multitouch Screen.Brian Lam of Gizmodo published an impassioned plea to boycott the iPhone shortly before its launch, due to the fact that Cingular had purchased the AT&T name, a brand Gizmodo's writer correlated with "monopoly tactics" in the late 70s. Gizmodo hasn't ever called for the boycotting of Verizon Wireless, which is well known for its anti-consumer tactics and which shares just as much blood with the old AT&T as its Baby Bell sibling Cingular, nor has it ever urged the boycott Microsoft products due to "monopoly tactics." Gizmodo also failed to boycott any other GSM phones that are tied to AT&T.Gizmodo's Lam and Enderle then teamed up with Slate's David Sessions in an article purporting to expose Apple's rated battery life for the iPhone. Sessions complained about the attention the iPhone was getting, and tried to dismiss Apple's announcement of a two fold increase in battery life over what was originally advertised. Unbelievably, Sessions and friends could only explain away the iPhone's jump in talk time by crediting its glass screen, saying that "glass transmits light more efficiently than plastic." That and some witchcraft.However, all of these individuals sharply reduced their squirt rate of false information after the iPhone's successful launch. In day and a half, Apple sold 270,000 iPhones compared to the 500,000 Palm OS Treos, 1.03 million RIM BlackBerrys, and 1.51 million Windows Mobile phones that were sold worldwide in the first 90 days of 2007.Apple has since nearly matched highflying RIM in sales during July, despite being limited to a single carrier and only offered for sale in the US. At this point, denying the iPhone is like saying the Earth is flat. It might be fun to do at a Renaissance Faire, but pretending to seriously doubt reality is not a good career move unless you work for the Street--or perhaps Rupert Murdoch, as Dvorak does.[Secret iPhone Details Lost in a Sea of Hype and Hate][iPhone Sales vs Zune, Palm, RIM, Symbian, Windows Mobile]And Now: a Warning.Let it be known that anyone who publishes further misinformation or blows out similar inanity will risk being instantly awarded a Zoon on the spot. No complicated voting, no tedious application process. New Zoon nominees will be rubber stamped with the same effortless fast tracking as the ECMA declaring Microsoft technology as an international standard.In fact, I’m going to totally Zoon Dan Frommer and Scott Moritz right now, as well as John Dvorak, Rob Enderle, Brian Lam, David Sessions, and even Roger Entner. And John Sculley. And while I’m handing out an intellectual property construct that costs me nothing to distribute, I will also award Steve Jobs with a Zoon for the whole two month “just kidding� iPhone pricing situation, although I might take half of it back if I get a $100 coupon that doesn’t force me to spend $500 to actually use it. So let that be a warning to you out there on the Tubes thinking about how to linkbait an article at the expense of the progress of technology. I have a rapid firing gun full of Zoons and I’m not shy about cranking them out. Be sure to post any nominees.What do you think? I really like to hear from readers. Comment in the Forum or email me with your ideas. Like reading RoughlyDrafted? Share articles with your friends, link from your blog, and subscribe to my podcast! Submit to Reddit or Slashdot, or consider making a small donation supporting this site. Thanks!
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Mac bloggers get excited when Apple Online Store goes down. Apple unveils Logic Studio
If you were up at the crack of "way to early" this morning and check the Mac blogs, you would have seen a handful of them getting all excited that Apple's Online Store was down and that Apple was... ....Read more on MacMerc.com
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Hold the phone: New iPod has iPhone qualities
IPod Nanos that do video. Thin, traditional-style iPods renamed iPod Classic and housed in silver and black that can hold up ...
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MovableType And TypePad Get iPhone Optimized Interfaces
Safari on the iPhone is possibly one of the most bipolar browsers of them all, so much so that some web sites and even Blogging Software are crippled unintentionally but the affects are still felt and often times goes without treatment. MoveableType…
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Kirk McElhearn on the New iPod Interface
Kirk McElhearn: When you are on the main menu (the top-level menu), or the Music menu (which leads to Playlists, Artists, Albums, etc.), you see album art on the right half of the iPod screen. This is a random cover from your music, and it changes about ever 8 seconds. It also moves around; you know, like those annoying Flash ads on web pages that distract you so you can’t read articles? ★
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iPhoneSIMfree updates us on their orders, future unlock plans
Filed under: CellphonesIn the wake of yesterday's news that the open source community had come up with its own free iPhone unlocking software, iUnlock, we began to get a slew of emails coming from customers of iPhoneSIMfree's largest distributor, Aussie iPhone Unlock. The email AIU sent to its customer list stated that IPSF had become unresponsive in fulfilling new orders for unlock licenses, and outlined the company's intention to instead donate the money from incoming orders to the iPhone Dev Team (itself a highly sketchy move, to say the least). Today we caught up with iPhoneSIMfree who let us know that they have not ceased fulfilling orders, and will continue to do business as usual in selling their unlock solution to new customers.Of course, now that a free solution is available we've all begun to play the waiting game in seeing whether Apple will re-lock all these newly unlocked iPhones with its next update, due out this month. We tried to get a firmer answer out of IPSF as to whether or not they'll unlock a customer's phone a second time should Apple re-lock in a future update; unfortunately there just isn't a final answer since it's still only hypothetical that Apple will re-lock unlocked iPhones. But IPSF did state that if re-engineering the next iPhone unlock isn't too difficult, they do intend to offer re-unlocks to current customers at no additional charge. Permalink | Email this | CommentsOffice Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
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My iPhone Porn Wish: What Everyone Wants But is Too Chicken to Say
Ok. I’m just going to say it because no one else seems to have the cajones to. The iPhone has some seriously huge porn implications. Not only do we have a device that has a decent sized color screen, access to the internet, and…
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The hundred gadget giveaway: round 36
Filed under: AnnouncementsAlright everybody, round thirty-six of Engadget's hundred gadget giveaway! Up for grabs for the next six hours: Gold - SanDisk Sansa Connect (4GB) Silver - Dynasty Warriors: Gundam (PS3)Bronze - iTunes Store gift certificate ($15)The rules (yeah, there are always rules): Leave a comment below. You can just say something nice about us, or you can tell us what you'd prefer to win -- but if you're picked you may not necessarily get it. You may only enter this specific giveaway once. If you enter this giveaway more than once you'll be automatically disqualified, etc. (Yes, we have robots that thoroughly check to ensure fairness.) In other words, be careful when commenting and if you submit more than once, only activate one comment, ok? If you enter more than once, only activate one comment. This is pretty self explanatory. Contest is open to anyone worldwide! Winner will be chosen randomly. Entries can be submitted for the next six hours. After that we'll move on to the next round of giveaways. Good luck! Permalink | Email this | CommentsOffice Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
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Video: Air Guitar Tutorial
A helpful film for the aspiring air guitarist.
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iPhone SIM unlock giveaway: round 3
Filed under: CellphonesWell, now you've got a choice to make. Do you want to hit up iUnlock, the free, open source iPhone SIM unlock solution (which is still early on yet, but does indeed work), or try your hand at taking home one of our iPhoneSIMfree "retail" unlocks? The IPSF crew has hooked us up with five iPhone unlock licenses to give away to you, our faithful, iPhone obsessed readers, so just hit up the simple rules below if you want to give it a shot. Here's how it works:Details about the unlock Bring your own iPhone. We're not supplying the device, just the unlock. You must send us your iPhone's IMEI; you can't resell the unlock. If we don't receive your IMEI in a timely manner, we may award the unlock to someone else. We will not be offering tech support on the unlock. Once you've got it, it's out of our hands, ok? We do not make any guarantees about the unlock. We're not guaranteeing that it will work when your phone gets the next Apple update later this month, that it will work with your SIM or your carrier, or even that it will work on your phone. We're not even going to guarantee you won't end up with a bricked phone. We're just handing it off to the winner, the end. The other regular rules (yeah, there are always rules): Leave a comment below. That's it! Who loves you, baby. You may only enter this specific giveaway once. If you enter this giveaway more than once you'll be automatically disqualified, etc. (Yes, we have robots that thoroughly check to ensure fairness.) In other words, be careful when commenting and if you submit more than once, only activate one comment, ok? If you enter more than once, only activate one comment. This is pretty self explanatory. Contest is open to anyone worldwide! Duh. Winner will be chosen randomly. Entries can be submitted for the next 24 hours. After that we'll move on to the next iPhone unlock. Good luck! Permalink | Email this | CommentsOffice Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
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What market is Apple in?
I'm reminded today, courtesy of Apple's announcement of Logic Studio (a tool for professional musicians) that Apple really has three major customer segments. Apple appeals to:- early adopters who think different (that's the creative types who like to stand out),- late majority consumers who want something easy to use that just works (customers of the iPod and iLife products) and,- professional content creators (authors, musicians, artists, filmmakers who want tools that free them to focus on their art, not the technology) Do you think Apple can excel at all three market segments at once? Again, Apple has a unique ability to appeal to the first 2 groups because of the shelf space they've carved out for themselves: Apple makes hard stuff easy. That is what Apple is all about - and it why they are often cast as the complete opposite of say a Microsoft. It's no wonder Steve contrasted the Media Center PC remote control when he showed the Apple Remote (hey, how come I never hear of anyone using Front Row...do you?) But winning in professional markets often means the opposite. These are pros. They expect complete workflows. And they expect their vendor to keep improving and updating the products they build their business on. It's pretty easy when you build a new product and attack an entrenched competitor (say when Apple came after Avid in the video editing business) but then your ability to innovate slows down as you focus on more arcane and less sexy components of the business. Apple really never has shown the staying power in pro markets, and I wonder if they plan to continue pursuing them. That said, now that Apple has a complete iLife suite with direct publishing connections to iTunes and even YouTube, are we witnessing the birth of a new age of semi-professionals (that's you and me) who can produce and distribute media without the need for such high end tools? A bunch of you contacted me to tell me you were surprised that I could create my eBook entirely in Pages 2.0. And iDVD produces better looking menus than DVD Studio Pro with far less work. Regardless, we have Apple to thank for giving us tools to pursue our passions at whatever level we fly.
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Palm shareholders approve Elevation Partners sale
Filed under: CellphonesIn a move that could be described as "totally unsurprising," Palm shareholders have approved the much-discussed partial sale of the company to a private equity firm called Elevation Partners (of which Bono is a member), and also a change in the board of director's makeup. The plan, if you'll recall, is for Mr. MacPhisto and co. to pay $325 million for a 25-percent stake in the company, while Palm itself will pay out a $9 per-share distribution of cash to current shareholders for a reduction in ownership. There will also be a new executive board chair, namely, Johnathan Rubenstein, an Apple alumni who ran the iPod devision from 2004-2006. Fred Anderson (another former Apple officer), and Roger McNamee (a Silicon Valley investor) will also join the board. Our man Ed Colligan said of the switch, "There are a lot of moving parts here, but the goal is to bring in a transformation and change the dynamics of the company," er... okay. Apparently, Palm has hopes that Mr. Rubenstein will help create "innovative products" and "bring them to market quickly." In our dreams guys, in our dreams. Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsOffice Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
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Connecting the Newton as a serial terminal
Filed under: Humor, Hacks, Retro Mac, Apple HistoryA little while back we linked to ByteCellar's Apple //c terminal, and now he's gone and put a Newton online. You can check out the whole setup in the gallery, but the short story seems to be that he hooked up the eMate 300 to a serial-to-USB terminal, and then ran it through his Mini. Pretty easy, he says, since he'd already done it with the Apple //c, and apparently it's just an experiment-- while he could easily keep it around for IRC, he says the eMate is bound to its eFate as a paperWate.And if getting the Newton hooked up as a terminal revs your engine, I was surprised to find out that TUAW houses the original Newton serial connector. Very impressive-- even in 1993, Sadun was doing stuff with Apple hardware that makes my head spin. Figgles, apparently, is her Newton.And finally, if you don't have the knowhow or the patience to hook your Newton up to a serial internet connection, you could always just pull an Ihnatko and fake it. How long has he had that sticker sitting around? If you're not up for actually stickering your iPhone, Jer Wood's wallpaper might be more your speed.[ via MacBytes ]Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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GUI version of free iPhone unlock in the works
A UIKit application to unlock your iPhone is close to being released, but it's being accompanied by some drama involving code copied from the original author.Read More...
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Apple Gazette Daily 118 - Logic Studio, Eve Online, and more
Logic Studio, Eve Online, and is the design of the iPod Touch a mistake? You can subscribe via iTunes, or by RSS feed, or… you can directly download the episode right here. In addition to that, you should be able to play every episode of the podcast directly in your browser by using the widget which is now located in the side column of the site. Just click on the headphones to play the podcast inside the widget with full audio controls.
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iSuppli on iCar: "Don't hold your breath"
In case a few of you believed that an iCar might be in the works after that rumor last month, market intelligence firm iSuppli says you're terribly, terribly wrong... at least for a few years, anyway.Read More...
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Exporting the iPhone
Canadian Dave Shea, on the SIM unlocking hacks for the iPhone: If you’re an American iPhone owner, you probably still remember what June 29th felt like. To a lesser degree, that was what today felt like for the rest of the world. ★
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First Came BattleFleet, Now There’s FeedMe
Remember the post I did about the game BattleFleet? The game is similar to Battleships where a player tries to locate another player on a grid map. Although I don’t play much, it is a pretty fun game. However,…
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The real story behind the iPhone unlock GUI drama
Filed under: Rumors, Software, Hacks, Open Source, iPhoneSo as you may have seen on some other sites, there was a little bit of drama today around the iPhone unlock program written (in part) by our own Erica Sadun. Lots of rumors are flying around, and lots of folks have it almost right. But none of them knows the real story. And since Sadun works for us, we have kind of an inside track on what really happened. So here it is.First of all, Erica didn't write the unlock application itself. The iPhone Dev Team did that, and it apparently is a real, no-code-stolen software unlock-- put it on your iPhone, run it, and then use any SIM you want. Erica only started to write the barebones of a GUI application for the unlock, and gave that code to the dev team.Which is where this haRRo person gets involved. He, a Belfast, UK man, is not a member of the dev team, but pretended to be. He apparently took Erica's code out of the IRC channel, with the intent of selling it as his own application. He even got an offer from an Australian company, $50k AUD, to allow the application he said he'd written.But he didn't write it. At all. Because while yes, the code he tried to sell was updated from Erica's code, it wasn't by haRRo. He actually contacted another coder to do the job-- who we spoke with, and our IM conversation can be seen after the jump.Update: Post updated below.Continue reading The real story behind the iPhone unlock GUI dramaRead | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Software Hacks iPhone Without Saw
It took a little more than two months of sustained effort from a loosely organized community of hackers, plus a breakthrough from the people behind iPhoneSimFree.com, but in any event, it's finally done: Vendors are distributing software that boasts the ability to unlock the world's most talked-about phone without invasive surgery. Now, by using iPhoneSimFree's unlocking software, which some small Web-based retailers are offering for around $60, an iPhone customer doesn't have to be locked into AT&T's two-year service contract.
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My Prayers Answered: iPhone Lightsaber
After making a post on why isn’t there a Lightsaber App for the iPhone I thought I wouldn’t get such a swift calling, I know I didn’t influence this but I like the timing. There is a Lightsaber App for…
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Ask TUAW: Anti-Virus in Parallels, inventory management, sharing iCal without .Mac and more
Filed under: Features, Tips and tricks, Troubleshooting, Ask TUAWIt's time again for Ask TUAW, you ask, we decide... or something like that. This week we've got a bumper crop of questions on: the need for anti-virus when running Windows in Parallels, managing inventory with your Mac, publishing iCal calendars without .Mac, accessing webmail with Mail.app, using an iPod Touch as a PDA, DVI to HDMI conversion and more!As always leave your suggestions and/or questions for next week in the comments to this post.Continue reading Ask TUAW: Anti-Virus in Parallels, inventory management, sharing iCal without .Mac and moreRead | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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The surprisingly watchable iPod nano
Dan Miller was skeptical that a 2-inch display would be worth watching. But a few days with the latest iPod nano changed his mind.
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News: Mix: Ringtones, Cirrus Logic, HTC, SendStation
Another method of creating free iPhone ringtones from standard AAC files has been discovered by the same MacRumors forum member who found the original method last week. The new process is currently slightly more technical, but appears to be more dependable. Roth Capital’s Jay Srivatsa claims that an audio codec chip from Cirrus Logic has been designed into the iPod Classic, replacing a part from Wolfson Microelectronics, reports Barron's.…
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iPhone price drop leads to sales boost
Filed under: Cellphones Shocking, we know. As if the price drops on the PlayStation 3 weren't evidence enough that we all like our gizmos a bit cheaper, a new report from Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster claims that iPhone sales skyrocketed shortly after the (hotly contested) price drops. According to his math, Apple needed to sell some 136,000 iPhones between September 5th (the day of the cuts) and September 9th (the day Apple claimed to have sold one million of its mobiles), which meant that 27,000 iPhones per day were getting unboxed in the five-day period. Comparatively, Munster approximated that Cupertino was unloading around 9,000 iPhones per day prior to the price cuts. 'Course, even Gene doubts that the recent sales surge will be able to hold steady, but we'd say the slashings have already had their desired effect.[Via DailyTech] Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsOffice Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
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iXoundwear announces new 3rd gen iPod nano-ready sport caps
Filed under: Portable Audio, Wearables They may not be as quick out of the gate as some manufacturers have been with their 3rd gen iPod nano accessories, but the folks at iXoundwear look to have made up for their lateness with sheer dorkiness, today announcing their new line of nano-ready sport caps. As you can see above, the caps will not-so-subtly house your shiny new nano in a specially-designed pouch on the side, with two bendable polyurethane plastic spools included to wrap your headphone cord around. If you think you can pull this look off, you'll be able to get the cap in your choice of blue, green, red, black or white this November for $20. Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsOffice Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
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Switched On: Fruit versus fowl
Filed under: FeaturesEach week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: As most Americans were getting ready for a peaceful Labor Day, it was war between Apple and NBC as the two companies couldn't agree to terms for carrying the network's shows on iTunes. A punchy media had a field day with the headlines -- Apple "Scrubs" iTunes Contract, NBC, iTunes Headed to Divorce Court, and Apple Peels Back NBC-iTunes Deal were just a few of the laf riots. Apple said that it moved to act in the interest of consumers, but the financial impact for both companies is practically nil. Engadget's sister blog TV Squad posted that it wasn't about the money for NBC, but about the flexibility to bundle programming. We are very early in the era of downloaded video. As long as this continues to be an opportunistic purchase, e.g., "I missed that episode last night," the market could probably bear more than $1.99. Where it breaks down is looking at buying TV shows as an alternative to DVD or subscribing to cable or another TV service provider (even though the big NBC hits are all on broadcast television). The comparison between getting shows via iTunes versus, say, a DVR is something that Switched On has addressed previously, and another Engadget column even ran the numbers.Continue reading Switched On: Fruit versus fowl Permalink | Email this | CommentsOffice Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
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News: iTunes users experience downloading issues
Many iTunes users are reporting a growing problem involving purchases from the iTunes Store. According to messages from iLounge readers and user reports on Apple's support website, customers are purchasing, and paying for, songs that refuse to download. When users try to select “Check for Purchases”, they receive an error message stating “Unable to check for purchases. iTunes Store unavailable. Please try again later.”…
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Review: Creative Xdock X-Fi Dock for iPod with Wireless Streaming and X-Fi Wireless Receiver
iPod owners and Creative alike are well aware that simple audio and video docks can be had for $29 or $39, depending on the iPod model, so it's a given that the Xdock needs to more than they do to justify the $200 asking price. The list starts small, then gets bigger: in addition to a top-mounted Universal iPod Dock, it includes a really nice Griffin Powermate-style illuminated metal volume knob, an auto-switching optical and audio audio output,…
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Ever since I switched to Mac OS X, I’ve been missing my favorite font, Sand. How can I get it back?
Stand by your Sand.
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New: Hidden Expedition: Everest
Race to the roof of the world in this adventure game.
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New: Jewel Quest 2
A puzzle game that takes you on a search for treasure on the bejeweled continent.
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News Corp. Won't Pull Videos From iTunes
News Corp. has no plans to pull its television shows from iTunes like NBC Universal, but echoed the media industry's calls for Apple to offer more flexible pricing, a top executive says. Many sector watchers expected News Corp. and other media groups to follow NBC Universal, which said last month it would not renew a deal to sell shows on iTunes because it wanted more flexibility in offering different packages and pricing. However, News Corp.'s president and chief operating officer said Rupert Murdoch's media group was not in a dispute with Apple.
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Guitar Hero III to Shred on PCs, Macs
Computer geeks who've quietly longed for the ability to play "Guitar Hero" on their PCs and Macs can stop fretting. A company plans to release a personal computer version of the addictive pseudo-guitar-playing game, currently available only on video game consoles. Austin-based Aspyr Media has partnered with Activision to create a PC/Mac version of "Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock," the latest version of the music play-along game. The product will be released in the fall. The PC and Mac versions will also enable online interaction.
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New: Slingo Quest
Train your brain with the successor to Slingo.
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Logitech unveils Pure-Fi Elite speaker system for iPod
Filed under: Portable AudioHot on the heels of Logitech's Pure-Fi Dream and Anywhere iPod speakers comes the Pure-Fi Elite, a system that reportedly ups the ante by offering up 80-watts of power and looks a hair like the AudioStation of old. Reportedly, the device touts two-way sats, one-inch tweeters, and four-inch woofers to go along with the built-in LCD display, wireless remote, iPod dock, video output, and auxiliary input jack. Details surrounding price and availability don't yet look to be officially available, but word on the street has this sucka landing next month for around $300.[Via MacNN] Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsOffice Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
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Apple Releases Logic Studio
Apple continues their streak of making up for lost time and releasing products by unleashing Logic Studio today. Apple today unveiled Logic® Studio, a comprehensive suite of professional tools that gives musicians everything they need to create, produce and perform in the studio and on the stage for just $499. Logic Studio features Logic Pro 8, a major upgrade that combines an intuitive new interface with Logic’s renowned sound quality and rock-solid timing, and introduces MainStage, an innovative new live performance application that turns the Mac® into a streamlined live rig. Logic Studio also includes Soundtrack® Pro 2, Apple’s professional audio post production software; Studio Instruments, made up of 40 pristine quality instruments; Studio Effects, with 80 professional effect plug-ins; a vast Studio Sound Library; and a powerful set of production utilities. Visit the official site for more info
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New: Professor Fizzwizzle and the Molten Mystery
Turn up the heat with this next installment in the adventures of Professor Fizzwizzle.
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The continuing quest for a data-only iPhone
Filed under: Deals, iPhoneEvery now and then I check back in with AT&T to see whether they've launched a data-only plan that I can use with my iPhone. The word from AT&T is always that plans are phone specific. As far as they're concerned you must purchase a plan that was designed for a particular phone. Thus, the Blackberry $45/month data-only plan cannot be offered for the iPhone. What I'm particularly interested in are two data plans: SmartPhone Max ($30/month, unlimited data, 1500 SMS) and MediaNet Unlimited ($20/month, unlimited data, no SMS). AT&T reps say they cannot offer these plans without voice (the cheapest voice plan is $40) and that even if they did, they must be matched to certain phones, like the Nokia 61024. I'm getting to the point where I'm ready to disable voice and I'd love to be able to do so without canceling my data--at least for a while. I know that some TUAW readers have succeeded in using their non-iPhone SIMS with existing AT&T accounts in their iPhones. Do any of you have data-only plans? And if so, how much are you paying?Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Skitch beta 4 released with better image handling, bug fixes
Handy screenshot utility Skitch has received a new beta update with some handy enhancements and a slew of fixes.Read More...
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Hack Attack: Team Unlocks iPhone, Gets Cracked By Community
As you know the big news was iPhone SIM Free finally unveiling their commercial unlocking Software to the world although it is plagued with problems that not only affect iPhone users but the company itself, hackers have taken aim and set…
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Doofus
Paul Boutin in Slate, on why he prefers his BlackBerry to an iPhone: When I’m in a tight spot, my BlackBerry always helps me out. It also sends a subtle signal to my correspondents that I’m getting a lot done. An e-mail that says “Sent from my BlackBerry” gives the impression that you’re on the move but still chained to work, e-mailing from the elevator. An e-mail that says “Sent from my iPhone” conjures an image of a doofus who wants you to know he has an iPhone. One could, of course, simply change the email sig in the iPhone Settings app to read “Sent from my BlackBerry”. Your colleagues will think you’re working your ass off. (Some of Boutin’s other observations, especially about BlackBerry’s AutoText feature, are actually practical.) ★
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Billable 1.2
Bunch of new features added to Clickable Bliss’s neato $35 invoicing app for Mac OS X. Top of the list: AppleScript support and the ability to send PDF invoices by email with a single click. Check out the screencasts to learn more. ★
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Access your Mac's "super quiet" mode
Filed under: Audio, Tips and tricksMuch like Nigel's amp that goes to 11, making it "...one louder," your Mac has a super-quiet mode. Macworld explains how to find it.First, use your keyboard's volume keys to turn the volume all the way down (using the menu bar slider won't work). Next, press the "Mute" key. The speaker graphic will appear on screen and display the familiar "sound waves." Listen closely (or plug in your headphones) - your Mac is in super-quiet mode.We're not sure when you'd want to do this, but now you can.[Via Lifehacker]Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Free the iPhone -- For Free
Save your money, you can unlock the iPhone for free now.
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Is that an iPod in your pocket or are you just using knockoff earbuds?
iPod culture and the supermarket: it's funny what you find in the check-out line.Read More...
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News: iPod classic, nano batteries beat Apple claims
When we posted our reviews of Apple's iPod classic (iLounge rating: B+) and iPod nano (iLounge rating: A) last week, our early tests had already shown that their battery performance exceeded Apple's claims. This wasn't a complete surprise, as Apple became conservative with battery promises two years ago, and has consequently delivered iPods that generally exactly meet or surpass the company's stated performance levels. Final…
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Eve Online coming to Mac
I've had more than one Windows user tell me that Eve Online is one of the best MMORPGs out there. I've actually thought about going the Boot Camp route, just to try Eve Online out. Fortunately, I'm not going to have to because Eve Online is coming to the Mac in the next few months. Eve Online is a starship focused MMO, and it's been one of the most popular for years. The Mac version of Eve Online will be Intel Only when it hits.
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Apple Neutral about iPhone Hacks
Apple will neither encourage nor make it impossible for iPhone hackers. This according to a report by Sascha Segan in Gearlog: “Apple will neither forbid nor support native code on the iPhone/Touch...� I’m happy and not all surprised about Apple’s customarily savvy stance…
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TypePad, Movable Type gain iPhone admin dashboards
Blogging on the go just became a lot sexier for iPhone owners, thanks to new TypePad and Movable Type dashboard UIs that offer access to all the primal admin and posting needs.Read More...
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News: Apple offers 30-day trial of One to One with iPhone
Apple is now providing a free 30-day version of its One to One personal training service with every retail store iPhone purchase, reports ifoAppleStore. The service, which normally costs $99 for a one-year subscription, includes up to one 50-minute training session per week; the terms of the offer indicate that the 30-day version is limited to a maximum of five sessions. Also, the offer's companion web page promotes Apple's iPhone workshops,…
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Hacha's PA20 and PC20 PMPs get release date, pre-order
Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video Hacha, makers of the familiar looking PA20 and PC20, is apparently planning to unleash the players on the world in the very near future. According to reports, the two PMPs will be hitting shelves sometime around September 22nd (or earlier), though right now we've only got those words to hang on. If you'll recall, the $175 PA20 (pictured) is a 3.2-inch, touchscreen media player, with 4GB of memory, the ability to play tons of media formats (MP3, AVI, XviD, WMA, WAV, APE, FLAC), and a microSD expansion slot for an additional 4GB of storage. The $170 PC20 has all the same features, though its 3-inch screen isn't touch-sensitive, and it totally rips off the iPhone's design. Go figure. Both are available for pre-order right now from the Hacha "fan" website. Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsOffice Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
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iPhone price cut generates 200% sales increase
Filed under: Apple Financial, iPhoneWhen Steve first announced the iPhone price cut, the nay-sayers were vocal: "It's selling so poorly," they said, "Apple has had to reduce the price significantly."By Piper Jaffray's estimations, Apple and AT&T was selling an average of 9,000 iPhones per day before the price cut, resulting in 594,000 units sold by September 5th.Combined with the 270,000 phones sold in the previous quarter, customers would have had to buy an additional 136,000 iPhones to reach 1 million units by September 9th - an increase of 200% in sales volume.Steve was right: They're selling boatloads of these things, and wanted to quickly sell boatloads more...and that's what's happening.[Via My iTablet]Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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FastIcon releases ''Art Toys'' freeware icons
The Fast Icon Studio has released a new icon set: "Art Toys", which contains 6 freeware icons inspired by some cool art toys. This icon collection is available for download for Mac OS X, Windows... ....Read more on MacMerc.com
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Data Usage Says More About AT&T Than iPhone Users
In an interview, AT&T chairman and CEO, Randall Stephenson said that one of the surprises AT&T had with the Apple iPhone is that amount of data usage iPhone users have consumed. Stephenson says the iPhone,…
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Does 300% Sales Increase After Price Drop Mean Change in Apple’s New Product Strategy?
We all know how the price drop of the iPhone last week from $599 to $399 was received by existing iPhone users but we did not know how that would translate to new iPhone customers. Now we know. According to Piper Jaffray…
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Why No Fries with the iPod touch?
After nine months of anticipation, Apple finally released an iPod based on the iPhone form factor and interface. But for reasons unknown, Apple chose to leave off one or two essential applications, and according to the latest rumor, has neutered others. You get the feeling that if Apple bought…
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iUnlock: First Free iPhone Unlock Released
The ties that bind the Apple (AAPL) iPhone to AT&T (T) are being broken in droves today following the release of iUnlock, the first open-source procedure that frees the device to work on other wireless networks. "If you're like us, you're furiously unlocking every iPhone in sight," writes Paul Miller at Engadget. The code, which was developed by an anonymous group that calls itself the iPhone Dev Team, is available in zip files at Gizmodo here. For iPhone owners in the U.S., this means that their phones will work with SIM cards from T-Mobile, which uses the same GSM protocol. It has even greater significance overseas, where GSM is standard. With iUnlock, the iPhone can be used in much of Europe and the Far East. The release of the procedure comes 74 days after the iPhone went on sale and one day after the first commercial unlock solution became available. It was only Monday that iPhoneSimFree finally started shipping their $99 product to iPhone resellers. As it happens, it was the release of iPhoneSimFree that gave the open-source team the clues they needed to come up with what they claim is a similar but independently developed procedure. You can read here Paul Miller's account of how programmers with names like Zappaz, Hexxat and GeoHot, working through the night and communicating on IRC channels, raced to crack the code. The iUnlock procedure is not for the faint of heart. Documentation is scant and there a real risk that a misstep will "brick" your iPhone. Moreover, it's known that several nice iPhone features, including visual voicemail and Apple's version of YouTube, don't work on unlocked phones. Apple today had no comment on the news. Earlier this week, hardware marketing chief Greg Joswiak told editors from PC Magazine that the company was taking a "neutral stance" toward third-party iPhone applications, although he might feel differently about this hack. AT&T's legal department is more likely to take a hard line, since this threatens their main source of iPhone revenue. But the legal situation here is murky. The exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that allows individuals to unlock their own phones may not protect companies that sell the same service to others. But iUnlock is free. And if AT&T's lawyers did try to take someone to court, they might have a hard time getting their hands on Zappaz, Hexxat and GeoHot.
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Create self-contained SSH key scripts
I was playing around with making SSH access to a remote machine as easy as possible for my other half. Initially, I generated a key pair using ssh-keygen and installed the public key on the server as usual, put the private key in a folder with a .command (double-clickable shell script for Finder) script like the following: #!/bin/bash # chimpy.command - Logs user bob into chimpy using private # key bob.dsa ssh -i ./bob.dsa bob@chimpy.sampsa.com Alas, that did not work as the .command file sets the current working directory to the user’s home directory, not the directory it was executed from. Annoying. But then I realized that as the key is actually a text file, so why not make the key itself an executable script? Luckily SSH is clever enough to ignore any superfluous text in the key file, so I renamed the bob.dsa key file to chimpy.command, and made it look like the following: #!/bin/bash # chimpy....
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Change the iPhone's conditional forwarding numbers
This is more of a GSM hint and common knowledge for GSM users, but relevant for iPhone users of this site who may have switched from CDMA carriers. Using standard GSM codes, you can change the numbers for conditional forwarding, such as forward if no answer, forward if busy, forward if out of reach. The default is to forward to voicemail, but there are times when you might want to change that. For instance, to forward calls to your home phone if you don't answer, dial this number (then tap the Call button)... *61*1234567890# ...where 1234567890 is your 10-digit home phone number. Dial ##61# and tap Call again to cancel that setting. When you do cancel, AT&T inserts the proper voicemail number, so everything will be as it was before you started. I do not know how it affects your minutes or if AT&T charges more for forwarded calls. Here's a complete list of conditional forwardin...
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Export images from iPhoto to a single zipped archive
I was using iPhoto '08, and was surprised to find that there was no apparent way to select a bunch of photos and create a zip file somewhere containing the originals. It didn't look like anyone had written a plug-in to do this, so I did. ExportToArchive is a plug-in for iPhoto (tested with iPhoto 7.x and 5.x) that works with the built-in iPhoto export subsystem. You select some photos from your library and choose Export... (from the File menu in iPhoto 7, and from the Share menu in previous versions). You can export the files in a zip file, or a tar archive compressed with either GZip or BZip2. That's all it does, but it seems to fill a niche that wasn't filled before. Installers for both versions, along with a more detailed description of how it works, can be found at the above link. If you don't want it installed for all users, then ...
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Access HFS+ discs in Windows via a free application
While I was booted into Windows XP via Boot Camp on my Intel Mac, I was frustrated by the inability to access the files on my Mac's HFS+ hard drive. So I wrote HFSExplorer, a free application for extracting files from an HFS+ volume (Mac OS Extended) located either on a physical disk, on a .dmg disk image, or in a raw file. Beyond Boot Camp users, other possible users include: Owners of HFS+ formatted iPods that wish to access their content from within Windows or elsewhere (a user emailed me and verified that this works). Users of PearPC or similar Mac emulation/virtualization software that wish to access the contents of their virtual hard disks (will only work if the disk image is stored in raw format, as in PearPC). People that need to access the contents of HFS+ formatted .dmg files (conversion is no longer needed). The program is written mostly in Java 1.5, with Windows-specific part...
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Know before you go: AT&T introduces International Data Plan for iPhone
Filed under: iPhoneWhen traveling on the high seas outside the United States, it's probably best if you power-off your iPhone: Press and hold sleep/wake for about 5 seconds and then slide to power-off. If you must use your iPhone during travel and need access to a data plan, check out this AT&T iPhone world data plan that gives your 20MB for $25/month. Participating countries include Canada, China and Mexico. Overage costs you $0.005/KB and use outside those 29 countries costs $0.0195/KB.Thanks to Darrel N. Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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A hundred thousand here, a hundred thousand there and pretty soon we're talking about a lot of phones.
Like, say, a million of them. Michael Gartenberg and Carl Howe opine on how a million iPhones in 74 days is pretty darn good. Howe's piece pretty effectively takes the remaining air out of the already limp balloon of Scott Moritz's claim that Apple was all set to sell a million phones in the first week (or weekend, depending on whether or not Moritz has taken his meds). If Apple was thinking it was going to do that, why was it so hard to find an iPhone that week? No matter how you slice it or try to discount it, the iPhone has already proved most of the aforementioned pundits wrong. If they want to claim that Apple didn't meet their expectations, that's fine. But any business writer or analyst who claims that selling a million units of a completely new product at an average price of $575 in a little over two months "isn't a good number" just is trolling for traffic. Last time I checked, half a billion profitable dollars in sales was real money in most people's minds. Claiming otherwise is just sour grapes. Indeedily-doo. Gartenberg, meanwhile, notes that... ...phones at that price point just don't sell in those kinds of numbers here in the US (where carriers have taught consumers the value of a phone is $0). He then wonders what's next. Here's the one thing that makes the horny one think that Apple might announce a 3G phone before the end of the year: the iPhone was still selling briskly at $575 (Howe's calculated average) when the company cut the price to sell even more. There's plenty of room at the top end of the market for more features. If you were having a hard time imagining what the so-called "iPhone nano" would be like, all the while laughing yourself silly at the idea of a rotary-dial scroll wheel, maybe it's because the iPhone as we know it is the "iPhone nano", at least for 2007. So, iPhone Pro anyone?
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Apple's Logic Studio, Express 8 hit the streets
Apple today unveiled Logic Studio, a new suite that includes tools for recording, producing and performing music. Also quietly slipped in was Logic Express 8.Read More...
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EVE Online coming to OS X in the coming months
A number of popular gaming titles have been coming to the Mac lately, and one of the more notables that we can expect to see soon is EVE Online.Read More...
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Was The iPod Touch Too Much Of A Competitor To The iPhone?
I’ve discussed the issue of which came first, the iPod Touch or the iPhone but something to think about is whether or not the iTouch will or would have affected the iPhone. This is a very delicate…
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News: Apple: Updates will 'most likely break' native iPhone apps
Yesterday Apple Vice President for iPod Product Marketing Greg Joswiak said that Apple is taking a “neutral stanceâ€? on third-party native application development for the iPhone. Apple has now backtracked somewhat on that statement, saying “software updates will most likely break” native applications in the future.